Shinobi Waiting
by Nezuko
Summary: [KakaIru, GenRai] [oneshot] Waiting is hardest on those who wait. Iruka waits for Kakashi, plagued by bad dreams of his mission gone wrong. Raidou waits for Genma, feeling tenser with every second his comrade is overdue.


**Shinobi Waiting**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "_Naruto"_ by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

Umino Iruka wasn't the sort of man who let things like bad dreams get to him. He knew enough about psychology and life to know that bad dreams were par for the course for the men and women like himself who had donated their very lives to the service of their village. He was a shinobi and a teacher. He studied and taught the science that lay behind the jutsu they worked and the tactics they used. Bad dreams, he knew, were the products of unresolved stress and anxiety, came from the brain's attempts to process trauma, and sometimes were simply the random garbage the unconscious mind threw off as neural paths were forged and strengthened, pruned and refined during sleep.

He knew bad dreams were not portents of the future - at least not for most - certainly not for him. They weren't signs of evil pending. They weren't secret glimpses of disastrous events in remote locations. They weren't things to be believed in. And so it was with a deep sense of irritation that he scolded himself to quit _thinking_ about it, as he poured yet another half-drunk cup of cold coffee down the drain. The dark brown liquid swirled against the ivory porcelain, dissolved in the rushing water from the tap, and disappeared, but not before Iruka once again flashed on the image from his dream. _Not coffee spilled, but blood, soaking into soft earth, pooling on cement, oozing and swirling away as rain beats down and washes the dark liquid into the gutter._

"Iruka-sensei?"

The chuunin teacher jumped, and almost dropped the empty mug, turning around to give the man who'd addressed him a tight, red-cheeked smile.

"Raidou-san."

"You alright?" The tall man rubbed absently at the prominent scar across his left cheek. "You looked like-"

"I'm _fine,"_ Iruka cut him off. "Just fine, Raidou-san. Thank you, really. I just was up a little too late last night."

"Sure." Raidou took his place in front of the staff-room sink, rinsing out his own coffee cup.

Iruka made way for the special jounin. He looked up at him, realizing he was out of place, somehow. "What are you doing here at the Academy? You're not thinking of taking on a new genin team, are you?"

Raidou refilled his mug from the communal coffee pot, then turned around to lean against the counter. "I was just checking on some stuff over at the admin building. You know, seeing what info had come in from the field recently. Thought I'd get my coffee here cause the Academy machine doesn't burn the stuff as bad as the mission room pot."

_Checking on stuff. From the field. On Genma-san. Who's out on assignment right now. And overdue back. Kakashi's not even overdue, he's just out on a stupid B-class mission he could do in his sleep. I had a bad dream and I'm acting like one of my little schoolgirls,_ Iruka castigated himself. To Raidou he turned a suddenly more focused face. "Any news of interest?"

"No. Nothing interesting." Raidou pulled a senbon out of his weapon holster and twirled it idly between his fingers. He stirred his coffee with it, licked it clean, then twirled it restlessly some more, before stuffing it back into the holster with an almost savage gesture and turning to leave.

"Raidou-san," Iruka called him back. When the big man turned the teacher smiled a little warily. "I'm sure Genma-san will be back soon. I'll let you know if I hear anything. Sometimes I hear interesting stuff from the kids."

"Sure. Thanks, Iruka-sensei." Raidou waved and departed. Iruka stared at the empty doorway for a moment longer, then shook himself, refilled his coffee cup, and headed back to his classroom. Papers to grade. Lessons to plan. Plenty to keep him occupied.

ooo

Rain beat down mercilessly, pounding the cold through Kakashi's wet uniform and into his skin. He crouched in a low irrigation ditch alongside a rice field, catching his breath, keeping his chakra low, and watching the blood dripping down, soaking into soft earth, pooling on cement, oozing and swirling away as the falling rain washed the dark liquid into the gutter.

It had been a simple B-rank mission. Should have been a cake walk. There weren't supposed to have been any particularly strong adversaries. It was just a snatch and grab. Recover the pilfered documents and return them to Konoha. Kakashi had walked right into the trap, and he was kicking himself for it as hard as he should have been kicking the Konoha Intelligence agents who'd fed him the faulty information. As hard as he had kicked the unexpected Sound ninja he'd had to dispatch. As hard as that pair of jounin had kicked him.

Now, although they were dead and the stolen documents were in his possession, Kakashi's mission was far from complete. He was hurt and tired, chakra-depleted and cold, and far from home. Far from help. Far from safety. And still pursued by the dead Sound ninja's comrades. If he was lucky, he'd be able to take refuge in someone's barn, or maybe even find a safe house where sympathizers to the Leaf shinobi dwelt. If he were lucky.

His chest and belly burned and ached where an arcing sword with a blade that buzzed and vibrated a quadrillion times a second with harmonic sound had slashed across his torso, flaying open armored vest and shirt and skin and muscle and even, across his ribs, biting through bone. It oozed and wept and bled now, so that the whole front of his once-green vest was a sodden scarlet. The red pooled under his crouched position, leaving no doubt that the Sound shinobi had succeeded, if not in stopping him, than at least in seriously slowing down the great Sharingan Kakashi.

Creeping into a culvert and pulling yet more preciously limited chakra from his battered body to create a shielding genjutsu and hide himself away, Kakashi slept. He dreamed of home and Iruka. Of warm coffee and fragrant, clean bed sheets. Of shiny black hair and a winsomely smiling scarred face welcoming him back.

ooo

Namiashi Raidou was a man who lived in his body more than his head. He didn't waste time pondering actions; he took them. He didn't fret over what was or might yet be, or analyze his dreams, or struggle to make sense of what he was feeling. He experienced and acted, dreamed and felt, and moved on. His body was a precision instrument, and it was one that kept perfect time. He was never late. Not to anything. Not if he could help it. And he was acutely aware in every fiber of his being when someone else was. When Genma was.

And Genma was very, very late.

Raidou found there was little he could do to assuage the burning, bunching unease Genma's lateness engendered in his muscles and sinews. Except run. Work out. Spar. Train. And run some more. In the eleven days, four hours, sixteen minutes and seven seconds that Genma had already been overdue, Raidou had run more miles circling Konoha than Genma's mission had taken him away from the village.

ooo

When the Kobayashi kid was absent from class due to a death in the family, Iruka knew the news was bad. He'd done a little digging since that afternoon two days ago when he'd encountered Raidou in the staff room. Shiranui Genma and Kobayashi Taisei had taken a mission together some three weeks ago. They'd been expected back in no more than ten days. Nothing had been heard from them since.

Iruka didn't wait when he got that little roster announcement that Kobayashi-kun was excused to attend a funeral. He gave his class a pop-quiz, begged one of the other teachers to look in on them, and darted over to the admin building. There was a duty roster there, and because he worked the mission desk, Iruka had sufficient clearance to know which of Konoha's active shinobi were available for assignment, which were disabled, which were away.

His eyes flashed over the list. Next to Kobayashi Taisei's name, the dull black mark indicating the man was dead. They flicked frantically down to the characters for Shiranui Genma, and he held his breath, anticipating the worst. But instead of black the mark was red. In hospital. Not dead. It was almost a kind of magical thinking that made Iruka lift his finger to touch that red mark. It was perhaps a sort of ghostly premonition that made him trace the row of marks up the line until he stopped with his finger resting on the blue, "on assignment" mark next to the name Hatake Kakashi.

ooo

At the hospital, at first, Raidou couldn't see Genma at all. He was hidden away in a room covered in seals floor and ceiling, and tended by medical ninja muttering incantations and working jutsu and administering drugs and performing complex operations, all to get the body of a man, who somehow seemed more important to Raidou than any other ever had, to hold onto his soul just a little longer, so he could learn that truth himself.

ooo

Iruka worried. And pondered. And told himself not to. He thought things through, turning them over in his mind long after whatever action to be taken had been taken. He lay on top of the quilt on his bed, in a darkened room, hitai-ate untied and casually cast over his eyes to block out any stray light, and turned his thoughts over and over like river-smoothed pebbles.

He worried about Kobayashi's death and Kobayashi-kun's loss. About Genma's peril and Raidou's silent, stoic anxiety. About what it meant when a ninja was overdue from a mission. And that Kakashi, at this point, really ought to have been back.

He worried until he fell asleep, and his dreams filled again with agile, lithe limbs and mismatched eyes in a scarred face. Silver-white hair that defied gravity, and pools of scarlet spiraling away in the rain.

ooo

The ninja that came to Iruka's door at two in the morning to rouse the sleeping chuunin was not happy. Not happy with her task. Not happy with the little dog badgering her, haranguing her, nipping at her heels.

"Hokage-sama requests your presence at the hospital immediately," the irritable woman said, but it was the presence of the equally irritable pug dog with her that motivated Iruka to move faster than he'd done, probably in years.

Kakashi, Pakkun told him, as they raced through Konoha's dark streets, had managed to get himself cut to fucking hell, and the dog had been pretty sure the kid was finally trying to suicide on him, but no, it looked like the little brat just ran into some unexpected bad luck. He'd summoned his dogs to keep him warm and go for help, and one in particular, himself, had been entrusted with the mission of bringing the chuunin teacher to his master's bedside.

When Iruka got there, they were still working on saving Kakashi's life, and couldn't be bothered with an anxious lover, so he'd paced the halls until he ran into a familiar, tall, broad-shouldered, scar-faced special jounin.

"Raidou-san."

"Iruka-sensei?" The tall man turned and fixed Iruka with a questioning gaze. He looked tired. Exhausted. Worn out with worry. "Why are you here?"

"They... Kakashi is..." Iruka faltered, but a light dawned almost immediately in his companion's eyes.

"I heard they brought someone important in. Must have been Kakashi. Tsunade-sama herself is working on him, so I'm sure he'll be fine." Raidou gave Iruka a tired smile. "Want to get some coffee? I'm sure there's nothing we can do right now but wait."

"Is Genma-san-"

"Sleeping," Raidou cut him off. "He's sleeping." And his tight-lipped expression said things were maybe not that simple, really, but he didn't want to talk about it, or maybe couldn't talk about it just yet.

ooo

So the waiting ninja sipped their coffee - bad coffee from the cafeteria - with the other waiting loved ones at the hospital. Fathers waiting while babies were born. Daughters waiting while grandmothers died. Parents waiting while children recovered from cancers and accidents. Scattered among the civilian waiting were the shinobi waiting, in uniform and stony-faced. Used to death and pain and this ritual of not knowing if a buddy or a subordinate, a commander or a lover, was going to survive his or her mission this time. Shinobi fingering their own healed scars and recalling their own brushes with death. Shinobi, like Iruka and Raidou, keeping each other company while they waited a lonely vigil for someone who, they told themselves, they should never have let mean so much to them.

ooo

They let Iruka in to sit with Kakashi as morning dawned. He was almost as pale as the bandages wrapped around him, and a blinking cluster of machines at his bedside monitored his breathing and pulse. They regulated the flow of oxygen into a mask that exposed rather than hid his pallid, far-too-perfect-looking lips. They massaged the tubing of the intravenous line, steadily pumping new blood - the blood of strangers - maybe even Iruka's blood - into a body that had exhausted its own supply.

Iruka sat next to the bed and took one chilled, ivory hand into his own warm, tan one. He rubbed a thumb back and forth over the muscular, sinewy knuckles, tracing little scabs and scars almost unconsciously. His tired mind drifted, liberated from nonspecific worries now, free to seize on the much more detailed threats he could see in front of him. Blood loss. Rib fractures. Tissue damage. Infection. Chakra depletion.

He certainly wasn't expecting it when the hand in his twitched and then squeezed back. When one heavy-lidded grey eye opened and fixed him with a slow gaze. When those pale lips quirked into a rarely-seen smile.

"Sorry I'm late," Kakashi whispered into the hissing oxygen mask. "I had to help a snake shed its skin."

ooo

For seven long days, Genma slept.

Raidou slept, too, some of that time. He slept sitting nearly upright, wedged uncomfortably into a small recliner too short for his long body, next to the bed of a man who looked like Death had simply chosen to delay a day or so before finishing the job. In fact, he was sleeping when the man he was waiting for finally woke up.

Genma opened bruised eyes on a white ceiling bathed in early morning blue, and the first sound he heard, other than the hissing and chirping and dripping of medical machinery, other than the low burbling of air through too much moisture in his chest, was Raidou, mumbling in his sleep. Muttering something that sounded suspiciously like 'Genma'.

"Sorry," Genma whispered, too softly to wake the sleeping man. "I know you hate it when I'm late."

ooo ooo ooo

_Special thanks to my early readers, momo, and kaja and telos and the writers of Scarlet Spiral, especially sna, who created the character of Kobayashi Taisei and graciously allowed me to use him and kill him for this story. _


End file.
